• Community engagement in context
  • Community engagement - an overview
  • Community engagement in a representative democracy
  • Key challenges for the public sector
  • Implications for public sector managers
  • The context for engagement
  • Clues to good community engagement
• Planning CE
  • Community engagement and the policy/planning cycle
  • Project goals
  • When is engagement necessary?
  • Community engagement objectives
  • Community research
    • Media research
    • Community profiling
    • Community segmentation
    • Community and issues analysis
  • Key communication messages
  • Selection of engagement techniques
  • Managing risk
  • Evaluation planning
  • Planning transition and exit strategies
• Implementing CE
  • Working with communities
  • Organisational culture
  • Resourcing
  • Structures and processes
  • Continuity and follow up
  • Representation and control
  • Coordination
  • Other issues
  • Embedding good practice
• Methods
  • Overview of methods
  • Methods of information-sharing
  • Methods for consultation and deliberation
  • Methods for active participation
  • Advanced participative methodologies
  • Choosing an engagement method
• Event management
  • Event engagement processes
  • Choosing a facilitator
  • Structuring the event
• Evaluating CE
  • Introduction to evaluation
  • Principles of evaluation
  • Identifying outputs and outcomes
  • Purpose and approach to evaluation
  • Evaluation criteria and indicators
  • Methods of measuring community engagement
  • Steps in evaluating community engagement
• Risk management
  • Identifying risks
  • Assessing risk
  • Managing external risks
  • Managing internal risks
  • Risk assessment and management plan
• Skills
  • Community engagement skills profile
  • Options for skills development
  • Building the skills of your team

Methods of information-sharing

Online processes

Web sites are a growing and significant channel for providing government information to the public and key communities. Information provided via web sites can be directed at all Queenslanders, translated into languages other than English to facilitate information provision to key groups, or presented on targeted sites to reach specific audiences such as Generate for young people.

Web sites can be important for providing information to support the range of community engagement activity, as well as lending greater transparency to government decision-making processes.

Please contact your Information and Communications Branch for advice regarding ways of presenting information in the web environment.

Shopfronts

Local offices used as shopfronts have a significant part to play in ensuring the success of community engagement activities. They can be involved in many of the engagement activities outlined here, including disseminating information, building relationships with community members and stakeholders, and providing context for community engagement issues.

Hotlines

Hotlines provide good feedback quickly on issues. However, they do require resources in terms of responding and collating the results from hotline discussions and in carrying out your promises in relation to the hotline and the community issue involved. As for all engagement activities, careful planning is required to make this approach work well for citizens, communities and government.

Working with interest groups, peak bodies and citizen panels

Many interest groups and peak bodies represent the interests of citizens and communities and may impact on the engagement activity that you are planning. You will need to determine what level of engagement will be required as part of the community engagement activity. Citizen panels provide direct feedback to government on particular issues.

Using the media

The media can provide a very effective way of disseminating information to different populations of citizens. Use of the press generally requires departmental sign-off. However, this form of dissemination may not be effective where you are seeking to work with a particular community group or group of citizens, as there is no guarantee that they will access the media and therefore receive the information you are seeking to disseminate. If media outlets exist that are targeted at the group you wish to engage, it may be helpful to use these media, e.g. Radio 4EB, the Samoan Times, and the TI Times.

Media activities can include:

• distribution of brochures
• advertising events or issues
• notification of decisions
• media stories.

Fact sheets, information papers and discussion papers

These are formal methods of raising issues and requesting submissions from citizens, community and community groups.

Information workshops

Information workshops can provide direct access to groups of citizens and communities, and ensure that the message you need to deliver goes to the right group. These activities have to be very well planned to ensure that they meet both the needs of the department/s you represent and the needs of other key stakeholders. You will also need to ensure that the right people are invited to these events and that the engagement method is appropriate to the event.

Other ways of disseminating information include:

• displays
• education and awareness program, for example, in schools
• newsletters.